Reply to "Comment on `Low-temperature phonon thermal conductivity of single-crystalline Nd$_2$CuO$_4$: Effects of sample size and surface roughness' " by Sun et al

TL;DR

This paper refutes a previous comment by demonstrating that the earlier estimate of phonon mean free path was underestimated due to magnetic contributions in specific heat data, clarifying the role of sample boundaries in phonon scattering.

Contribution

It provides a corrected estimate of phonon mean free path by using non-magnetic analog data, resolving previous contradictions about phonon boundary scattering in Nd$_2$CuO$_4$.

Findings

The mean free path is comparable to sample dimensions when using corrected data.

Magnetic contributions significantly affect specific heat measurements at low temperatures.

Boundary scattering remains a dominant phonon scattering mechanism in Nd$_2$CuO$_4$.

Abstract

In their comment \cite{Sun} on our study of phonon heat transport in Nd$_2$CuO$_4$ \cite{Li}, Sun and Ando estimate that the phonon mean free path at low temperature is roughly half the width of the single crystal used in our study, from which they argue that phonon scattering cannot be dominated by sample boundaries. Here we show that their use of specific heat data on Nd$_2$CuO$_4$, which contains a large magnetic contribution at low temperature that is difficult to reliably extract, leads to an underestimate of the mean free path by a factor two compared to an estimate based on the specific heat data of the non-magnetic isostructural analog Pr$_2$CuO$_4$. This removes the apparent contradiction raised by Sun and Ando.